mulch ado, part 2

The weather held out, so we decided to tackle the back yard. We ordered too much mulch, and Joe was set on using it to cover the bed of ivy we spent most of this spring ripping out. Thanks to the rain, it all grew back—and then some. Luckily, common sense prevailed and Joe rented a rototiller. I have only two words for this machine: Worth it. Joe also had two words: Whoo hoo.

But for all its virtues, the rototiller didn’t pick up the weeds and roots—Joe says there is a model that does, but it wouldn’t fit in his truck—so I did the unthinkable. I ordered Izabelle to help us. By this point, my back was killing me, and I figured her 10-year-old spine could handle some stooping and scooping.

In retrospect, I’m not sure it was worth the complaining–she told me she was “calling in sick” about every 5 minutes. But after a full day of work, our backyard looks significantly better:

Maybe now our lavender bushes will catch up to the mammoth azaela.

The former ivy and weed breeding ground. Oh, and we finally planted our magnolia there at the end. Not that we have a shortage of trees or anything.

We used most of the topsoil to even out the grade of this side of the house. Now we need to plant grass seed and we’ll have a nice path to the front between the two mulch beds.A very sweaty job, but so satisfying to see results.

mulch ado about nothing

For our July 4th holiday, Joe and I decided to indulge in that most all-American of pastimes: yard work. We just about gave up since monsoon season hit southeastern PA (or so I assumed from all the rain we got in June).

I ordered mulch for Thursday evening, but was thwarted by thunderstorms. It was rescheduled for Friday morning, but my hopes of getting an early start were already fading. I was sure they’d pull a cable guy and not show up until after 1.

So I was pleasantly surprised to hear the truck pull up at 8:30 a.m. I wasn’t dressed, so I made Joe sign for the delivery. My first mistake. This is what they dumped on our driveway:

Great—except it’s not what we ordered. It’s playground mulch, and we’d ordered dyed black (who knew mulch was so diverse?). The company was very nice, admitted their mistake and said they’d be back to clean up. Boo, meanwhile,  was ecstatic, thinking we’d just given her with the world’s largest litterbox:

We spent the next two hours shooing her away from it until guys with shovels came to scoop it all back up. By the time the real stuff got delivered, along with our topsoil, it was afternoon before we got to work—like I figured. By the end of the day we had the front bed done:

And only this much dirt left to move out of our driveway:

Piece of cake.

up

Joe doesn’t like my first choice for a ceiling light in the office:

He actually preferred my second option, which I think is more modern. Maybe my taste is finally rubbing off on him?

Now, usually, when he vetos something, I get upset, especially if it’s for my office, the room where I supposedly have free reign with the decor. But knowing I could overrule him made me more willing to see what else is out there. And that can be a good thing. Here’s what I found–vote for your favorite.

The frontrunner:

A cool industrial look:

A wildly expensive but cool modern take on a topographic map:

I like how this one has a little bit of a feminine edge:

there’s one on every block

So, remember how I was worried about alienating the neighbors? I can stop now. Yep, it turns out that we couldn’t possibly outdo the previous owners.

I can’t stress enough how much I love my neighbors. Joe and I fell in love with this neighborhood even before the house, and it still may be the bigger selling point. It’s an older, turning-over development with an equal split of retirees, who we love because they’re quiet, and young families, who we love because they have kids Izabelle’s age. People take care of their lawns, pick up after their dogs, and there’s a Rita’s water ice and a library within biking distance—what’s not to love?

Of course, I also love a good crazy-neighbor story. We had several on the block where I grew up, including a squatter who posed as a professional athlete and stole people’s water during the day, and a guy who had a shrine to Hilary Clinton in his house (discovered when he put his house on the market after his divorce).

Now I can proudly boast that our house has a progeny almost as crazy. Our lovely octogenarian neighbor spilled the beans the other day during a chat. We bought the house from the son of an elderly woman who had passed away, and he seemed nice enough (his realtor is a story for another day). But his father was apparently the neighborhood nut.

For starters, the guy used to sit on his roof during Halloween and spray trick-or-treaters with a hose. At least until they got smart and took his ladder away. He tossed logs into our neighbor’s pool, even as he posted signs on his property about being a good neighbor. He cut her telephone wires on several occasions, and spray-painted her car. Twice.

Now, Joe always says there’s two sides to every story and that’s true, but the spray-painting actually ended up in court, with multiple defendants. From the sound of it, the guy was going down the block like a teenage graffiti artist.

Hearing these stories, my eyes just kept getting wider and wider. My neighbor, somehow, holds no grudge against the guy, who she feels was mentally ill. And I guess I can thank him. Even with our power tools and exhibitionist lack of curtains, we still seem like the Brady Bunch by comparison.

What’s your best rotten neighbor story?

yard candy

I also puttered outside this weekend, and here are the money shots from that. Our pink blooms are dying off just as the white ones are opening up. Above is phlox, which is pretty, if weirdly named. below, a white diamond hydrangea.

I have to say, after seeing all the gorgeous blue hydrangea in the neighborhood, I kind of wish I’d gone off color-scheme.

And I finally got around to potting the parsley and basil that was leftover from Joe’s grandma’s garden at the shore. I can already taste the pesto.

alienating the neighbors

The nice thing about finally having decent weather is that we get to work outside. Our neighbors may take the opposite view.

Regardless, for the next few weeks, sanding and staining wood will be my life. Joe finalized the design for my closet system, and I am desperate to have a place, any place, to hang my clothes. Four and a half closet-less months is my limit.

So far, I got two boards done. It doesn’t sound like a lot, but that’s because there are four passes for every board: medium-grit first, then fine, on both sides. Plus, there were these maddening sprinkles of rain that interrupted, forcing me to throw plastic over everything in a panic. God toying with me again.

The big problem is where to put all that wood. It has to be able to dry safely, without getting dinged up, and our garage is at max capacity. Thanks to our ant problem, though, the shed is still pretty empty. So Joe and his dad devised an ingenius system of hanging the finished boards from the shed rafters via hooks screwed into the sides. It looks to me like a wood slaughterhouse.

Two down, 11 to go.

Sigh.

success

So here’s my first salad. It’s spinach topped with strawberries, gorgonzola, and candied pecans with a champagne vinaigrette.

It’s good, but not good enough to convert me into a regular leaf-eater. The homemade dressing was spicier than I’d anticipated, maybe because I subbed white wine vinegar for champagne vinegar and went with Dijon when I couldn’t find spicy apricot mustard. Joe wouldn’t try any because of the gorgonzola.

The bigger success was my homemade pizza. I’m not a big cheese person (I am actually mildly lactose intolerant), but we’ve been on a provolone kick for a while. This week, I got some from Wegman’s that was purely inedible. The stuff wasn’t cheap, though, so I was determined to figure out a way to eat it. I found a recipe for a provolone and mushroom pizza—yum.

Making the dough was actually pretty easy, even though I got cake yeast instead of dry. I made Joe his own pie to top, but we had no tomato sauce or mozzarella, so we improvised with chunky spaghetti sauce, garlic and fresh basil.

His margherita style pie was decent, but the mushroom was out of this world. I swear it may be the best pizza I’ve ever had. The secret is this little bottle:

Black truffle oil. You finish the pie with a little of this and some oregano. It’s seriously a miracle ingredient, but it’s expensive (eight bucks for this little bottle) and has more calories per teaspoon than a truckload of bacon. But it makes you seem like a freaking genius in the kitchen. I made Joe try a slice and actually got a compliment out of my picky eater.

I think we’ll have a make-your-own pie night again soon. I’m curious to see what Belle thinks. And if she’ll want chicken nuggets as her topping.

salad days

I finally got around to going to our local library. It’s a really nice one,  and over the weekend, I devoured the first two books I’ve read in a year. One of them was called Hungry Monkey, and it caught my interest because it was about a restaurant critic trying to raise his daughter to be an adventurous eater.

I live with two of the least adventurous eaters in the world. Despite my valiant efforts to teach Izabelle about the virtues of fresh fruit, she prefers cold chicken nuggets (her mom packs them in her lunchbox. Don’t even get me started on that). If she could, she would live off of those, pretzels, and water ice.

Joe has made strides but he is not much better. We eat chicken 6 or 7 days a week. He’ll occasionally try fish, but that’s about it. I, on the other hand, love food, the more adventurous, the better.

My biggest failing is salad. I suck at making it, and it almost never occurs to me to eat it. That may have something to do with Joe’s technique—he unvaryingly favors romaine and hunks of raw vegetables. On the rare occasions I am served salad, like a wedding, or decide to order one I love it.

So I’m on a mission: to find out how to make a really, really good salad. I’m going to try a new one every week for a while (recipes welcome). First up: a strawberry, candied nut, and gorgonzola spinach salad. Wish me luck!

chaos theory

This is the only thing that’s happened around the house in the past week, thanks to the month o’rain we’ve had. Our lilies bloomed.

The inside of the house is actually more of a mess than ever, since Joe and his dad moved all the crap I had piled in the closet to the living room while they install the baseboard. And then had to stop midway through because of the incessant downpour. So I’m forced to hopscotch over boxes of crap to get to the TV or dining room table. Fun.

Oh, and while they were installing the baseboard, Joe’s dad accidentally scratched up two of our floorboards horribly with the zipper on his pants. None of us realized they make Dockers with zippers like ginsu knives.

But as relieved as I was to give up my title as Hardwood Destroyer—this is waaay worse than the tiny dent I made by dropping a can of WD-40—I am not happy with the present state of chaos.

At least the lilies are looking good.

business is blooming

Not sure what these are, besides pretty:

The roses are starting to grow on me.

Not sure what this is either. We were thinking of cutting it down until it bloomed like this. Now, how could we?